Wayland's Earth Day: Building community ties

Tuesday

Apr 29, 2014 at 10:04 AM

By Andrea CaseSpecial to the Crier

On Sunday, May 4, Wayland will hold its annual Earth Day event from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Town Building (41 Cochituate Road). Lunch and drinks will be available. For more information go online (transitionwayland.org). The following is the seventh article in our Earth Day series:At Wayland’s Earth Day SkillFest, you might learn about long-term food and water storage or how to create a native plant garden. You could learn how to repair your bicycle, keep bees, or prepare healthier meals.There will be dozens of opportunities to see and learn skills from one another. It will also be an opportunity to connect with people responding to climate change by making our community stronger and more resilient.The idea behind this celebration came from an active group of Wayland citizens, some of whom belong to the Wayland Green Team or Transition Wayland. We brought Solarize to town, enabling almost 75 homes to purchase rooftop solar panels at very low prices. We brought recycling, composting and gardens to the schools. We have planted and maintained a garden at the Hannah Williams playground. We work together at the community garden and in our own gardens. We show movies and host discussions on environmental topics. And we have made great friendships.In addition to working in the community, we spend time together and enjoy each other’s company. We are a community with shared values who believes the pleasures of working together learning new skills and caring for one another will make us happier, healthier and wealthier. This wealth will not accumulate in our bank accounts but rather as social capital.Robert Putnam in his book "Bowling Alone" found that a community’s well-being depends on the quality of the relationship among its citizens. He explores how this social capital has been declining because of time and money pressures, suburbanization, and the effect of electronic entertainment. We seek to reverse this by enhancing our social bonds.Much of what we do together involves gardening and food. But there are many ways to work together. We plan community events. We also carpool, watch each other’s children, help with shopping when someone is sick, and care for pets when people go away.All this happens without keeping score. We know we can rely on one another. Building our skills and deepening our friendships and bonds to the community help secure our future and make life more fulfilling and fun.Many aspects of life in one of the wealthiest suburbs in the U.S. pull us away from community. The great thinker and poet Wendell Berry writes, "It becomes increasingly difficult to learn the truth about the activities of governments and corporations, about the quality or value of products, or about the health of one’s own place in the economy … Our private economies will depend less and less upon the private ownership of real, usable property, and more and more upon property that is institutional and abstract, beyond individual control, such as money, insurance policies, certificates of deposit, stocks, and shares. And as our private economies become more abstract, the mutual, free helps and pleasures of family and community life will be supplanted by a kind of displaced or placeless citizenship and by commerce with impersonal and self-interested suppliers."With our SkillFest and other activities, we seek to grow our share of Berry’s "free helps and pleasures."This past summer and fall we pooled our resources and skills to "put up" peaches, apples and pears. In August we purchased 160 pounds of peaches at bulk prices and got to work. Over three days we turned those fresh peaches into canned peaches in light syrup, peach salsa, peach jam and peach butter, about 175 jars worth. We worked and chatted and worked and sampled and worked some more. Then we divided the spoils to enjoy the summer flavor throughout the coming fall and winter.In October we visited our farmer again and purchased about 300 pounds of apples and pears. Once more we worked together, sharing our time along with our canners, crockpots and dehydrator to make canned pears, apple sauce, apple butter and dried apples. We also trade raspberry jelly, honey and other products from our individual gardens.Michael Pollan, the journalist and food activist, motivates us to think carefully about our food choices, including the time, money and effort we put into our meals from farm to table. He stresses the links between food and community and care for the planet in his book "The Omnivore’s Dilemma," stating, "The single greatest lesson the garden teaches is that our relationship to the planet need not be zero-sum, and that as long as the sun still shines and people still can plan and plant, think and do, we can, if we bother to try, find ways to provide for ourselves without diminishing the world."Wayland’s SkillFest is an opportunity to learn new skills in food production and cooking, repair and making. You can learn about Timebanking or join the Green Team, Transition Wayland, and the high school’s Green Thumb Club. Or just come and enjoy the Diamond Jubilee Carousel, the plant sale, and the concurrent library book sale. You’ll see community in action. Be part of it. Please join us!Andrea Case has a master’s of science in public health. She has been involved with Transition Wayland, the Green Team and Wayland’s Earth Day since moving to Wayland four years ago.